The Spirit Level Data: An Antidote to Alternative Facts

The Spirit Level was the book that launched our campaign and the data underlying the famous graphs and the book's analysis have proved popular with academics, teachers and students over the years as well as members of the public with wide and varied interests. The dataset comprises two sections: first, the developed-world countries and, second, the US States. The Spirit Level thesis was developed over these two test-beds.

The dataset represents an impressive and substantial body of work by Professors Wilkinson & Pickett and, as such, we do ask for a donation when people download the data in order to help sustain our campaign. Please be as generous as you can manage. Thank you.

In these challenging times, hard data and evidence are more important than ever. The Spirit Level data shows that more equal societies are better societies, and more sustainable too. Downloading this data, and learning from it, is nothing less than an act of resistance in this so-called post-truth era.